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Simma down: The King of the Dancehall has returned.
Seven years after his last studio album — 2016’s Unstoppable — Beenie Man is back with Simma, his latest star-studded, genre-bending opus. Featuring collaborations with a plethora of artists ranging from Shenseea and Shaggy to Giggs and Stonebwoy, Simma effortlessly traverses the intersections of dancehall, roots reggae, drill, hip-hop, and Afrobeats.
The album arrives amid something of a revival for the Grammy winner. This year, his classic 1997 hit single “Who Am I,” became the soundtrack for one of social media’s most popular music trends — in essence, people sing the first two words of the chorus (“sim simma”) and wait in anticipation for their chosen subject to finish the rest of the lyrics. La La Anthony recently used the challenge, aptly named #SimSimmaChallenge, to quiz famous friends like Kelly Rowland, Ciara and Kim Kardashian on their Beenie Man lyric knowledge.
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The trend is a natural extension of the timelessness of Beenie Man’s music. Dating back to 1983’s The Invincible Beany Man — which arrived when he was just 10 years old — Beenie Man has been reigning over the dancehall. Although the title of his latest album doesn’t have anything to do with “Who Am I” or the #SimSimmaChallenge, the record still houses a few career throughlines, including reunions with Mýa (“Docta”) and Sean Paul (“Supa Star”), who he previously worked with in the early ‘00s and ‘10s.
Simma, originally completed in 2021, suffered a lengthy delay after Beenie’s mother passed in 2020 following complications from a stroke earlier that year. “At that time when the album fit for release, I was in bare depression, mourning, all of these things,” he reflects. The album also serves as his first LP since his instantly iconic 2020 Verzuz battle with Bounty Killer. In this way, Simma is an unbridled celebration of life, longevity and resilience.
Beenie Man has earned six entries on the Billboard Hot 100, reaching as high as No. 26 with “Dude” (with Ms. Thing), the lead single from 2004’s Back to Basics. On the Billboard 200, the dancehall legend has racked up five entries to date, peaking at No. 18 with 2002’s Tropical Storm. On Reggae Albums, Beenie Man has notched six No. 1 titles from 13 overall top 10 projects.
In a conversation with Billboard, Beenie Man goes behind the scenes of the creation of Simma, recounts that improptu mid-flight performance, reflects on his storied career and gives advice to the rising generation of dancehall artists.
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Simma has been in the works for some years now. Did anything about the album change between its original release date and Sep. 1, 2023?
There’s a lot of things that change about the album, because we mek an album before and then my moms drop out by the time when the album fi release. So at that time when the album fit for release, I was in bare depression, mourning, all of these things. I was in it for two years until my brudda Blue decide to say, “Alright, we need to get into this thing now. Get out di depression, get out all di things you going through.”
So, my natural instinct is to go into the studio and beat up some riddim. So we got some from Fanatix from England – them send first – and then we got some from Busy Signal, and then we start from there suh. Then we went to England and get some more riddims and different type of beats. I never know seh di album turn out di weh it turn out, but when it finish, the job was great. No disrespect. We make over 60 song for di album.
There’s a host of genres on Simma — from roots reggae to drill — what was your vision in terms of exploring different styles on the record?
We’re just making music. We do Afrobeats, we do everything. Just make some music. Because people love good music and good music lasts forever. Regardless. Good music outlives you. Trust me.
You mentioned that there’s some Afrobeats on this album. Recently, there have been conversations around Afrobeats “replacing” dancehall on the global stage, and here you are merging the two styles on Simma. What do you think about the two genres’ ability to coexist?
There’s no music that can replace dancehall. Dancehall will never go nowhere. Dancehall will always be here. Because if there was no dancehall, there would be no Afrobeats. That don’t make no sense. People haffi stop, because they don’t understand the lifespan of music. You have enough music that come and last 5, 6, 7 years, but dancehall have been here from before hip-hop! If hip-hop a 50-years-old, dancehall almost 100-years-old! [Laughs.]
We have been through Shabba Ranks, we have been through Ninjaman, we have been through the greatest – Super Cat, all of them. So, dancehall is not going nowhere. Not at all.
There are many collaborations on Simma. Was there any thought of making this a straight collaborative album? Why did you decide to keep the solo tracks on there?
Every album I’ve been listening to is a million collaborations. You listen to Jay-Z last album, collaboration. You listen to Drake album, collaboration. So, why should not I? So you have a Busy Signal, Jamaican. You have a Shaggy, Jamaican. You have Sean Paul, Jamaican. These are superstars. So why don’t you use your own Jamaican superstars? In Africa, you have a pack of superstars. You have Stonebwoy, superstar. You have Giggs from England. We have all the superstars we can use. It’s my time. So, why not? [The King] has all his subjects.
We mek this album this way because the first part of the album was all me. Then I said, “Nah, get some people.” I’m still gonna be there. It’s not like somebody guh sing a song pon mi album which I’m not on. I am going to be inside that music. People sometimes dem like listen to other style or other version or other pattern, so mix up di ting.
Talk to me about the song with Tina (Hoodcelebrityy), “Let Go.” There’s this really dope conversational, back-and-forth vibe going on there. How did that song come about?
She even surprised me, because she never DJ my lyrics — she just get into the studio just like how mi know she a guh do. But mi nuh wan leave nothing to chance. So when she jump pon di record now and start do her ting, I say, “Oh, wow, murda.” She kill it. And the song wicked.
You and Teddy Riley have been friends for years. What was it like finally working together in a musical capacity on this album?
Teddy is a musician, and I’m a musician. Regardless of how long mi know him, it’s a matter of him a have time, because him always busy. The man spend six months a make a riddim for me. Six months. Every time I make di riddim, I finish the song, him send back fi di song and play a next riddim around it, and play a next riddim around it, and put on some other ting and mix the song different and send back di song inna different format and then mi haffi tell him “Stop!” [Laughs.]
And him say, “Hear this last mix, please listen to this last mix.” So, di man play di last mix fi me and mi seh, “Jesus Christ! Di brudda has a great mind. Just please gimme di last mix, don’t mek mi a beg.” And he gimme di mix. Cause mi nuh wan him fi touch di song again! But every time him touch it, the song get better.
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You’ve spoken before about modern dancehall shifting away from the tradition of riddims, who do you think shoulders the responsibility of maintaining that tradition?
It’s on us [as the older generation]. We are the artists that have been here before. We responsible, because it’s all music. Alright, say you’re having a dancehall stage show anywhere in the world, and you bring one million dancehall artists. You have dancehall artists from Africa, you have dancehall artists from Mexico, you have dancehall artists from America, you have dancehall artists from everywhere in the world!
But an artist like Ninjaman — none of these artists a bad like Ninjaman. They could never, because Ninjaman walk pon di stage — him don’t have to have a hit song today, him just need to present. Him just walk pon di stage, di people dem get crazy. Shabba Ranks. Him don’t have to have a new song today, all him haffi do is be present. So, imagine me now. I come after them, present, and get a response. Imagine a Buju Banton or a Sean Paul. Imagine a Shaggy, you get where I’m coming from? We will always be here. We nah going nowhere.
Music is not until death do us part. We dead and music still alive. So, this is what we are here for: longevity, to last, to be that person that people can always depend on. And this is why the album is called Simma, because the King is still here.
When it comes to the younger, rising generation of dancehall artists, who do you think are the emerging leaders?
Wow. Alright. I listen to Skeng. I listen to Skillibeng — sometimes I listen to him and laugh because I find him really hilarious. Valiant. Popcaan and dem are still my young artists dem still. They’re who I really listen to. You see, artists with substance and artists that make sense and take my brain somewhere. I don’t really listen to much new dancehall. I don’t — like, seriously. I’ll put in a Lauryn Hill CD and listen to that.
When did you first see the #SimmaChallenge online?
Well, somebody showed me, yuh know, because mi nuh pon di phone. [Laughs.] And then mi see a next person do it, and mi see another person doing it, and mi see dem still doing it. Then the challenge getting bigger and bigger. So, that’s the reason why I talk about songs with substance. The song outlasts you.
Alright, suppose I never have the courage fi still doing music, I would never have a new album. But the songs that I did from before gimme di courage fi know I can still do what I’m doing. You have to make songs with substance. Songs [where] we can hear inspiration, songs that can inspire you. You inspire your own self!
And I think that was really reflected at the West Indian Day Parade in Brooklyn over Labor Day Weekend. I heard different songs of yours all the time while I was out there.
Exactly. Alright, Bob Marley sing reggae. Mi sing dancehall. Bob Marley the King of Reggae, I’m the King of Dancehall.
I want to know the story behind that plane performance! They weren’t lit enough for you!
It’s not a story behind it! Mi leave out mi seat, mi wan look fuh mi band members. So, I went down there and everybody was sleeping. So mi wake up alla di band members dem and everything. But by waking them up, mi a wake up everybody. By the time we reach through di place fi go through the door for first class, everybody a seh, “You have to give something!” So, mi a seh, “What??” Because myself, I was sleeping. So, I said, “Give me something.” So, I’m just standing around and start [singing the opening of “Who Am I”] and the plane start sing.
It never plan. It’s just something that happened.
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Were you able to attend to Caribbean Music Awards the other week (Aug. 31)?
No, mi never able to see it. But I can remember the first time I win one of those. 1995. It’s been going on for a long time. I went up against Capleton, [starts singing Capleton’s “Tour”]. It was live on TV in America in New York, a matter of fact.
For those awards shows, I really feel appreciative of them — because they’re giving us the opportunity so we can work harder to become the people that we are today. People appreciate your work, so all yuh haffi do is just give thanks and appreciate what they’re doing. So, I do respect the Caribbean Music Awards and all the years it’s been going. Sorry I don’t have a visa to be there!
In light of the Bob Marley biopic hitting theaters soon, what are your thoughts on who gets to tell the stories of our Caribbean icons and legends, and how those stories get told?
Bob Marley have over five sons that coulda play Bob Marley, cause alla dem look like him. But dem decide fi use somebody else. Really don’t make no sense. Well, it’s a Bob Marley movie. Mi wait till mi can get it inna my circle. But, I think dem shoulda use Skip Marley, who is the last Marley. Or use Stephen Marley or Ziggy Marley or Julian Marley. But Bob Marley a Bob Marley. If you make a movie about Bob Marley, everybody wan see it.
Since you have reached the highest heights that dancehall, and music in general, has to offer, do you have any advice for younger dancehall artists who are looking to follow in your footsteps?
Two: Work hard in the studio and work harder onstage. Because onstage, people remember you the person, and in the studio, people remember the songs. But if you don’t work harder onstage people will not remember you as an individual, but people will always remember your songs.
Michael Jackson mek an album every two years, but people still remember him for his performance. I nuh care how many hits Michael Jackson sing, it’s never greater than that Moonwalk. Never greater than that backslide. Yuh see Michael Jackson with spandex? Nobody remember dat. They remember di performance! [Laughs.]
Elvis Presley was the greatest entertainer before Michael Jackson. Dem still remember Elvis as in performance, not in song. When yuh go in Las Vegas, yuh find 10 Elvis Presley shows, because of his performance. That is my only advice to any artist.
During the week of the winter solstice last December, Allison Russell stood in a large circle of “goddesses,” chanting and singing together to conjure communal joy out of thin air. Drums, guitars and strings joined her and her circle of “chosen sisters” as they celebrated “being back in our bodies.”
If that sounds more like a new-age spiritual exercise than a recording session, Russell will be the first one to tell you that two things can be true at the same time. “It ended up being very witchy and woo-woo and wonderful,” she tells Billboard. “We just got to be so present and say ‘F–k oppressors telling us we’re not gorgeous and perfect as we are.’”
That sentiment was the leading ethos behind the creation of The Returner, Russell’s spellbinding sophomore LP (out Friday, Sept. 8 via Fantasy Records). The folk star wanted to create an album that didn’t look back on the pain of the past — she had already done that on her outstanding 2021 debut album Outside Child — but rather firmly planted itself in the present and called for a much-needed celebration. Or, as she more poetically puts it, The Returner is about “stealing joy from the teeth of turmoil.”
To accomplish that goal, Russell ventured outside of the world of Americana music that made her one of the fastest-rising folk stars of the last few years. Taking a “rhythm-first” approach to creating the new sound, the singer-songwriter and Dim Star — the production duo of Russell’s partner JT Nero and Drew Lindsay — employed elements of funk, rock, disco and pop to further bolster her folk roots and give The Returner a fresh new sound.
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Russell says that this approach came about in part because she spent the last few years getting to tour internationally for the first time. “We toured in a lot of places where English isn’t the first language,” she said. “We realized that there’s a transcendence that comes when you allow yourself to feel music with your whole body. A lot of the demos started with us hearing the polyrhythmic layers of groove within some of the things that JT [Nero] and I were writing. That informs melody, that informs even the syllables, the words that are chosen.”
After spending three months working with Dim Star to create demos that achieved something close to the sound they were looking for, Russell recounts being contacted by her label in late 2022 and told that, in order to release an album in 2023, they would need her master by the end of the year thanks to ongoing delays in vinyl production.
Where most artists would panic, Russell felt relief — booking six days at L.A.’s Henson Recording Studios (a space “presided over by my hero, Kermit the Frog,” Russell quips), the multi-hyphenate embraced the do-or-die nature of the sessions. “We recorded Outside Child in four days, so we were like, ‘Oh, we have six whole days in the studio? That’s great,’” she recalls. “It actually felt magical — Joni [Mitchell] recorded Blue there, Joni recorded Court and Spark there, Carole King recorded Tapestry there, Tina Turner and Cyndi Lauper blew everything off the top of ‘We Are the World’ there. There were all of these good ghosts in the walls.”
In order to bring the expansive new sound of The Returner to life, Russell brought together a 16-person band of women to the week-long studio session. Featuring artists like SistaStrings, Joy Clark, Elenna Canlas, Elizabeth Pupo-Walker and a dozen others, the group became the engine through which Russell and Dim Star engineered their creative vision.
“The magic of this circle is that everybody is such a high-level, multifaceted artist; everybody’s a lead singer, everybody’s a writer, everybody’s a composer, everybody’s a multi-instrumentalist,” she said. “So when we go in the studio, it’s with this level of trust — and because of that, the album ends up being a musical conversation in real time with these brilliant artists that I feel so privileged to be working with.”
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Throughout her conversation with Billboard, Russell refers to the femme-focused troupe as the “Rainbow Coalition,” a name she also interchangeably uses for the community of artists she surrounds herself with and her fans. While the name may evoke a sense of LGBTQ-centric idealism that Russell shares with those she accepts as her chosen family, the singer points to the term’s long history for context.
Before the name was adopted into a larger cultural context, the original Rainbow Coalition was formed in 1969 Chicago by Fred Hampton, the deputy chairman of the Black Panther Party. Hampton helped bring together the Young Patriots (made up of poor Southern whites), the Young Lords (made up of Puerto Rican migrants) and street gangs throughout the city to work together towards social change.
While the original coalition fell apart after Hampton’s assassination in December 1969, Russell says that the core organizing principle of the original Rainbow Coalition remains a cornerstone of her own worldview today. “Any of us, globally, who are interested in the business of harm reduction, and of pushing for equality versus inequality — that’s the Rainbow Coalition,” she says. “There’s so few places where we can gather people from all different kinds of beliefs, histories, ethnicities and heritages in joyful assembly — but we have that in playing and listening to live music together.”
It certainly helps Russell’s righteous cause that she finds herself in storied company — in the years since she began working as a solo artist, the Montreal-born artist has become a contemporary of superstars like Brandi Carlile, Annie Lennox, Chaka Khan, and even Joni Mitchell, who brought her onstage earlier this year for her Joni Jam concert at The Gorge.
“Community is vital [in the music industry], both in terms of sharing resources and also just artistically,” Russell offers. “Getting to be a part of that event, where we were all there in service of Joni and in reverence and celebration of our elder was the most inspiring, transcendent, beautiful thing to get to witness and to be a part of.”
After being welcomed with open arms by artists like Carlile and Mitchell into the industry, Russell is now laser-focused on doing her part to leave the world a better place than she found it. One way she intends to do that is by fighting back against the ongoing wave of anti-LGBTQ legislation sweeping through the U.S., targeting healthcare and privacy rights for the transgender community, as well as First Amendment rights for drag performers.
Even broaching the subject of anti-LGBTQ legislation immediately prompts Russell’s indignant fury. “It is domestic legislative terrorism,” she says, her friendly smile dropping into a grimace. “It’s so serious, and we sleepwalk through it at our peril, right? This is some Third Reich s–t, and we cannot allow it to continue; we must fight back. And that’s what I’m talking about when it comes to the Rainbow Coalition — it’s all of us who stand at any intersections of the margin, anyone who loves us, and anyone who stands with us.”
Russell, believing in the power of live music to bring people together, decided to channel her anger into action. Teaming up with Jason Isbell and number of LGBTQ non-profit organizations in Tennessee, Russell co-organized Love Rising, the star-studded benefit concert that took place just weeks after the state passed laws banning gender-affirming care for minors and banning drag shows in public spaces. Featuring performances from superstars like Maren Morris, Sheryl Crow, the Brothers Osborne, Hozier and plenty more, the event was a runaway success — especially considering they raised over $500,000 for LGBTQ charities in the area.
Looking at all the artists who came out to support Love Rising — especially many of the straight artists who chose to speak up for the LGBTQ community — gives Russell a sense of hope for the future. “It’s exactly what we need,” she says. “It’s people like Hayley [Williams] taking a red eye flight to come back from opening for Taylor Swift, because she said she’d rather die than not be there to support the trans and drag community in Tennessee. These incredible allies are so important.”
But the work is far from over — Russell says she plans to use her upcoming tour for The Returner as on opportunity to work with organizations like the Human Rights Campaign and Headcount to register concert-goers to vote in the 2024 election and learn more about the attacks against the LGBTQ community. “It’s all hands on deck,” she resolves.
She’s also not taking her eyes off the music industry at large — amid the rising tide of harmful rhetoric, Russell says that a number of fellow artists in the industry have remained “deafeningly silent” on the topic, specifically in the mainstream country space. Russell doesn’t name anyone in particular, in part because she doesn’t want to add to “the algorithm of problematic artists,” but also because, as she says, she’s not trying to rehabilitate the “empathy deficit” she sees in the genre.
“I’m not interested in fixing the toxic white supremacy and masculinity of the mainstream. I think it’s a waste of energy,” she says. “I’m much more interested in building the beloved community of people that are ready to show up and do this work together, that believe in equality. The others will come along eventually.”
In large part, that is the message of The Returner — it takes a village to make deep, meaningful change in the world around you, and Russell is ready to build that village from the ground up.
As the United States prepares to enter another particularly brutal presidential election cycle, the country’s cultural divide is continuing to play out across entertainment. In film, there are the dual box office phenomenons of Barbie and the QAnon-tinged Sound of Freedom — a dynamic that is mirrored in music with the undertones of racial violence in Jason Aldean’s “Try That In A Small Town” lifting the song to the top of the Billboard Hot 100 as Beyoncé’s Renaissance World Tour, a loving tribute to Black queer culture, breaks records around the world.
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Beyoncé’s seismic tour (in support of her Billboard 200-topping 2022 album of the same name) explicitly highlights, uplifts, and centers the lives and cultural contributions of the ballroom scene, a community anchored by Black and brown queer folk — the very people songs like “Small Town” seem to be railing against. It expands Renaissance’s explorations of the expanse of dance music and ballroom culture into a nearly three-hour multi-act spectacle. With the inimitable Kevin Jz Prodigy serving as the tour’s guiding voice, the Renaissance Tour stands in complete defiance of the recent tide of anti-LGBTQIA+ attitudes and legislation that has swept the country, immersing both creator and observer in the unadulterated freedom of ballroom.
Having kicked off on May 10 in Stockholm, Sweden, the Renaissance World Tour touched down in Las Vegas, Nevada for two shows at Allegiant Stadium on August 26 and 27. On Sunday night (Aug. 27), the Human Rights Campaign Foundation, the educational arm of the nation’s largest LGBTQIA+ civil rights organization, hosted the first-ever Equality Ball in association with Beeline Productions and the Shady Gang, with support from Beyoncé’s BeyGOOD Foundation.
“This is a beautiful manifestation,” gushes Human Rights Campaign president, Kelley Robinson. “The fact that it came together this year means so much, because not only has this been a vision that [we] wanted to manifest, but also we’re sitting in a state of emergency right now.”
On Sunday night, The Equality Ball — which Robinson says was the result of the HRC’s partnership with Lena Giroux Zakalik, executive producer for Beeline Productions, and Carlos Basquiat, a dancer and choreographer on the Renaissance World Tour — tackled the pain of death and grief as much as it celebrated the grandeur of ballroom culture. In fact, the Equality Ball served as a hopeful bookend to a month that began in the shadow of the tragic murder of O’Shae Sibley, a Black queer dancer who was attacked with a barrage of homophobic slurs before being killed by a 17-year-old for vogueing to a track from Beyoncé’s Renaissance album.
“Jonty, Yvette [Noel-Schure’s] basically adopted son, was killed,” Robinson says. “One in five of every hate crime is motivated by anti-LGTBQ+ bias, and, at the same time, we’ve got hundreds and hundreds of anti-LGTBQ+ bills that are moving forward in states every day. This was a moment where we needed to not only celebrate the Black queer experience, but [also] put it on center stage.”
Given that Las Vegas lacks the ballroom roots of New York City and the house music roots of Chicago, the city may initially seem like a curious choice to host the Equality Ball. Nonetheless, “we have to be here,” stresses Robinson. “We’re here today in the state that’s gonna be consequential in the 2024 election. We have to understand that for us to be able to celebrate inside that building, to be able to live our fullest and most, most authentic lives, we have to make sure we got laws and policy that protect us on the outside [too].”
Like with nearly every other corner of the Black experience, streaks of death mark the ballroom community at every turn — a fact that performers at Sunday night’s Equality Ball did not shy away from. The troupe Madame Arthur, one of the pre-ball performers, delivered a deeply moving cover of ABBA’s “Dancing Queen” that decreased the tempo of the original and featured lyrics rewritten to reflect and uplift the hundreds of thousands of lives that have been senselessly lost to anti-LGBTQIA+ violence.
The history of Madame Arthur – the drag cabaret venue the performance group is named after, which opened in 1946, currently features a troupe of queer artists — added an extra layer of nuance to their performance, a reminder that the fight for total LGBTQIA+ liberation has been roaring for decades on end. “[Ballroom] comes from a really harsh culture. It was birthed out of negativity, to keep it honest. People were getting kicked out of their houses and shunned by their parents,” says Stephanie “Packrat” Whitfield, one of the executive producers of the Equality Ball. “So to make a community, it’s like a phoenix rising from the ashes, right? Everything was against us, and we made this beautiful thing out of nowhere.”
For a culture that loses so many influential movers and shakers before they have a chance to bask in the glory of their own accomplishments, the Equality Ball allowed elders in the ballroom scene to enjoy a night of genuine revelry. Shannon Balenciaga, Overall Mother of the House of Balenciaga, and Stasha Garçon, Iconic Overall godmother of the House of Garçon, shared a good-hearted battle as they both walked the runway during a series of appearances from ballroom icons before the ball formally commenced. Kevin Jz Prodigy and Kevin Aviance, whose voices have provided a key backbone to both the Renaissance album and tour, performed throughout the night, with Prodigy emceeing a healthy chunk of the ball.
In addition, the judges panel for the ball’s five main categories included impactful ballroom figures such as Jack Mizrahi, Dashaun Wesley, Twiggy Pucci Garçon, Ricky Holman and Jennifer Barnes-Balenciaga. The night’s focus on pillars of the ballroom community instead of on the celebrity of Beyoncé emphasized the overarching goal of the Equality Ball — to capture the minds and attention of those who many have only been exposed to ballroom culture through entertainment media, and invite them into an authentic representation of the culture and the fight to keep it safe, preserved, and alive.
“With this Equality Ball, we’ve been trying to educate,” says Whitfield. “We have educational moments throughout the entire event where people can learn about ballroom, because it’s very secretive. We don’t let everybody in, because we are safe.”
While Beyoncé tapped a wide range of Black queer collaborators for Renaissance and its accompanying tour, such as Honey Dijon and DJ Mike Q, one of the biggest challenges with celebrity allyship is toeing the fine line between selflessly uplifting a marginalized community and unintentionally dominating that spotlight. Star power the size of Beyoncé’s rarely dims enough to completely disappear. But the “Break My Soul” singer was far from the focal part on Sunday night. Sure, her tour film crew and dancers — Honey Balenciaga and Les Twins, among them — were in attendance, but the Equality Ball did not buckle under the weight of her celebrity. In fact, most of Beyoncé’s involvement happened behind the scenes through her BeyGOOD charity foundation. Robinson recalls a phone call with BeyGOOD executive director Ivy McGregor, Carlos Basquiat, Zakalik and Whitfield “a week after Jonty was murdered, maybe two weeks after O’Shae was murdered.”
“It was about us sharing our individual experiences,” she reflects. “But it was also about this broader context of what it means for Black and queer folks who are fundamentally defining the culture right now to also have our lives stolen by doing what is necessary to be ourselves.”
Even though the journey towards the Equality Ball began several years before anyone heard a single note of Renaissance, Whitfield reveals that it was only at the “last minute” that everything came together. “It always fell through because people are still getting to know ballroom, and what it really means and how to represent that to the world,” she says. “Woo, I’m getting teary-eyed just talking about it.”
Sunday night was a special one for Whitfield. She and Carlos Basquiat not only got to take in the brilliant ball they co-executive produced, but they also got to debut their new kiki house, the Kiki House of FuBu. “It took us a really long time to find the right people to build the community to raise funding,” notes Whitfield. “That’s one thing in the ballroom community is that we are people from low-income housing, low-income communities. So to bring Black and brown people from all gender expressions and sexualities, it’s always a journey. It was a long road of seven years.”
In addition to the highly entertaining ball, The Human Rights Campaign also offered countless educational resources at the Equality Ball, including HIV testing, voter registration, and direct access to information about local LGBTQ+ programs and initiatives. Events like the Equality Ball are tangible manifestations of celebrity allyship, a mode of support that can often feel surface-level and exploitative. For an album with influences as specific as Renaissance, notions of support simply could not stop with the music. “We love y’all watching Pose and Legendary, but we also want y’all to come outside and support!” proclaimed Whitfield at the start of the night.
Renaissance — along with Pose, the Emmy-winning FX drama series, and Legendary, a ballroom-themed Max reality competition series — is one of the most prominent works of art in a late-2010s wave of Black queer-inspired pieces of entertainment. “Honestly, it was like ‘Finally!” That’s how I felt [when Renaissance dropped],” says Whitfield. “Some of us have been in ballroom for years and we see everyone use what we do and never give us recognition. There’s a lot of appropriation. So, while they’re elevating, we’re still on the ground floor and underneath the floor, and it’s very unfair.” With Renaissance, however, Beyoncé tapped ballroom icons, Black queer dance music producers and writers and hired tour dancers who “not only have put in the work in the ballroom community, but also have that skill to be onstage and empower a whole generation of new beings,” says Whitfield.
Converting consumers to steadfast supporters of the ballroom scene and Black queer liberation is a testy task, especially when so much of the struggle takes place within the joint vacuum of celebrity allyship and capitalism. Nevertheless, the Equality Ball shines as a beacon of hope. “We love everybody loving the album, but are you really coming to help us?” poses Whitfield. “It’s one thing to help the three or four of us that are onstage, it’s another thing to come into our community and learn about our culture.”
As BeyGOOD’s involvement in the Ball demonstrates, finding the humility to humble yourself and research and learn about a culture that is not yours is imperative to establishing a foundation for genuine, unwavering support. “We still have so many people that are homeless and are fighting for survival on a daily basis,” she stresses. “So, to have people really come in and support our community without just taking up space, but really taking up an active space of learning is what’s important.”
“A lot of people wanna be on the floor now,” she continues. “But you can be on the floor, if you learn the history and respect the pioneers that have laid down their lives for us to be here tonight.”
On Billboard’s Power Publicists list, the top artist representatives at labels and independent companies share stories of the unforgettable moments their careers in music publicity have included thus far, as well as the philosophies that guide them.
Below, members of their often-extensive teams weigh in.
On Their Craziest PR Memories….
“Super early on in my career I was on the carpet for a gala on a Monday in May. I was very junior and not necessarily supposed to be in this situation with this artist, but there I was walking up the stairs holding the longest dress train. As flashes began to pop, it became clear that I did not know how to properly fix a train for a photo. Needless to say this artist not-so-quietly instructed me to find someone who knew what they were doing, quickly. Note: I quickly learned to fix a dress train.” —Beau Benton, svp, media & operations, Republic Records
“I once took an early morning flight and went straight to set for a photo shoot that lasted over 24 hours. We didn’t leave the set once, not even to check into our hotels — we just walked right back onto the plane the next day. I take pride knowing that experience didn’t break me; however, it did break the internet…” —Marisa Bianco, svp, media, Republic Records
“Once upon a time, I had a client performing an acoustic session at a well-known publication. Above their studio was a therapist’s office and drums were not exactly welcome in the session due to noise concerns. Without divulging all the mishaps of the day — an actual physical showdown broke out over a box drum. As a publicist, you quite literally need to be ready for anything and everything and always have your mending kit ready because you never know when a box drum might start an underground fight club.” —Erika Clark, vp, artist & media relations, Island Records
“Walking life-sized llama puppets down the red carpet at the VMAs in 2015 with Fall Out Boy was never something I thought I’d be able to add to my resume!” —Natasha Desai, vp, Full Coverage Communications
“I can’t say I ever imagined myself working the doors at Stevie Nicks’ afterparty to celebrate her second induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. That was pretty amazing.” —Gabi Hollander, director, Full Coverage Communications
“My artist arrived to a red-carpet (my first-ever red-carpet) an hour and a half late after the driver got lost, so I sprinted and found them a mile away on foot. They were the only artist to arrive on foot and did so approximately 1 minute before Taylor Swift. We were sweaty but we survived!” — Katie O’Gara, manager, artist and media relations, Island Records
“I once had an artist alert our team they were ‘on their way’ to a full day of press in NYC that was slated to start in an hour. It turned out what they meant was they were ‘on their way’ to the airport in Los Angeles, set to depart on the 6 hour LAX to JFK journey, arriving right in time for our entire planned press day to end. The minutiae matter!” —Erin Ryan, senior director, artist and media relations, Island Records
“Attending an event at the White House with a client and getting into a bit of a disagreement with the Secret Service.” —Jessica Sciacchitano, vp, music and entertainment, R&CPMK
On The PR Nightmares They Survived And Learned From…
“Back in 2018, at a prior job, I was gearing up for an annual activation and performance jam session with an array of acclaimed talent when the venue was faced with a bomb threat the day of the event. I had to deescalate the tension and concerns of on-site press, affirming that this was not what we meant by ‘an explosive lineup,’ while prioritizing the use and reporting of the brand/talent’s approved language by media covering the evening.” —Joshua Dickinson, senior director, publicity, RCA Records
“Being stuck on the set of a music video for thirteen hours with a few important journalists and not being able to complete the interviews. It was a turning point early in my career and taught me the importance of building real relationships. Transparency, good conversation and craft services helped us all get through a very long shoot.” —Randy Henderson, svp, publicity, Interscope Geffen A&M Records
On The PR Philosophies That Got Them Through It All …
“While our world is filled with many uncontrollable variables that often cause us to quickly and strategically pivot, showing up for our clients and working hard for them every single day remains a constant.” —Avery Robinson, director, Full Coverage Communications
“I always strive to put thought and meaning behind anything I do for an artist. As publicists we should strive to tailor the opportunities as best as possible for each artist and always have an opinion on why they should do it. One of my very first bosses in this business told me that if all you’re doing is sending an opportunity via an email, anyone can do your job. What matters most is the inclusion of your thoughts and your passion for the project.” —Ayanna Wilks, vp, publicity, Epic Records
Like many good things, it started with a deep dive into yacht rock.
Scott Barkham, who manages the experimental soul outfit Hiatus Kaiyote, was trawling Spotify’s less-traveled byways looking for hidden yacht rock gems when he happened across “Dreaming,” a snappy-yet-plush track by the 23-year-old singer-songwriter-producer Gareth Donkin. “It was really well constructed and executed,” Barkham recalls. “So I investigated further.” On Instagram, he found a video of Donkin covering Bobby Caldwell’s wistful 1980 classic “Open Your Eyes.” “That really got my attention,” Barkham says. He now co-manages Donkin.
Donkin’s debut album Welcome Home, which is out Friday (Aug. 24) on the young label drink sum wtr, is grounded in immaculate R&B from the late 1970s and early 1980s — delicate falsetto, giddily elaborate vocal harmonies, opulent keyboards, nimble bass lines. There are echoes of Debarge, Kenny Loggins, Quincy Jones‘ productions for George Benson and James Ingram, and a host of fragile soul ballads that seem on the verge of evaporating like smoke before a stiff breeze.
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“I really love that classic sound, and I feel like that’s a hole in today’s scene,” Donkin says. “Some people like Silk Sonic and Tom Misch are killing it by revisiting that.” His goal: “Bringing the character from that era’s music” into the present.
Growing up in France near the Swiss border, Donkin started playing piano at age eight and became addicted to the production software program Ableton at 13, the year before he moved to London. “I’ve had such a fascination with music and the creation of it since, well, forever,” he says. “Around the house we were always listening to Prince, Stevie Wonder, Jamiroquai, all the greats.”
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While Donkin spent some time playing drums, he mostly works with keyboards and technology to translate his ideas. “I can hear parts and find MIDI instruments or very realistic sounding samples to realize and execute those,” he explains matter-of-factly. “A lot of the songs I’ve made I’ve kind of written up here” — he points to his forehead — “before even coming to the piano and playing it out.”
His music found a wider audience in 2019 with “Catharsis,” which contrasts airy, mercurial vocals and a needlepoint guitar solo with an unwavering neo-soul beat. “That was the first fully fleshed-out song that I wrote and recorded vocals over,” Donkin says. It “caught the eyes and ears of the wider producer/songwriter community on Soundcloud and Spotify. This led to a lot of collaboration opportunities, and music platforms such as Soulection to discover my music and [in turn] put a lot of people onto it.”
Much of the music on Welcome Home was started the following year, during the tumult of the pandemic. Isolation, despite its many drawbacks, did not hamper Donkin’s ability to conjure a sumptuous sound — “Nothing We Can’t Get Through” and “Tell Me Something” come on like they’re auditioning for inclusion on the back half of Michael Jackson‘s Off the Wall. (The reference point he cited for the string arrangement on the former was Disney scores.)
For more oomph, there’s “‘Til the End of Time (Night Sky),” a harmony showcase underpinned by a tricky, propulsive beat that stutter-steps like Al Green’s “I’m Glad You’re Mine,” and “Something Different,” a bright, crunchy, just-too-slow-to-disco track with a virtuosic, head-nodding outro. (That outro is “the oldest part of the record;” Donkin wrote the chords at age 18 while sitting in an airport in Greece.)
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After Barkham heard “Dreaming” — and found that he had already saved “Catharsis” to his library on a previous Spotify discovery expedition — he reached out to Donkin. “When I really love the artistry, I’ll offer my help,” Barkham says. Soon he was listening to an earlier version of Welcome Home. Donkin “was referencing Ashford & Simpson, obscure yacht rock like Bill LaBounty, Brazilian music,” Barkham marvels. “The level of sophistication in his music and his production went way beyond what I was expecting.”
Barkham asked Donkin’s permission to share the music with a few people whose taste he admired. That group included Nigil Mack, a former major-label A&R who helped sign Kid Cudi. Mack was impressed: “To be so young but be able to write at that top-line level kind of blew me away,” he says. “So did his vocal tone.” Mack founded drink sum wtr, which shares services with the indie stalwart Secretly, last year. Donkin was among his first signings.
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With one album done, he is already thinking about his next release. “I’ve been on a listening binge with Earth, Wind & Fire, and their arrangements and the horns parts are just incredible,” Donkin says. “With the next project I can hopefully get bigger horn parts.”
He’s also in the process of honing a mostly untested live show. Donkin “needs to do tons of shows and start to just play in London regularly and just get himself out there as often as possible,” Barkham says. “I performed some of the songs when they were still in demo stages but not as much as I would like to,” Donkin acknowledges. “I hope to hit the road next year.”
But first, Welcome Home: “I’ve always envisioned my first big statement being something that I work on over time that just shows where my head has been musically speaking,” Donkin says. “I’m ready to let people in.”
There’s an anecdote in the opening pages of Together, Somehow where the book’s author, Luis Manuel Garcia-Mispireta, recounts a moment on the packed dance floor of the infamous Berlin nightclub Panorama Bar.
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In the telling, a young man squeezing through the mass of dancing, sweating bodies pauses in front of Garcia-Mispreta just long enough to utter the question, “Alles klar?” (“All good?”) to the raving ethnographer.
When Garcia-Mispireta responded affirmatively, “Ja Alles klar,” the nameless young man simply smiled, then, “he caressed my face along my jawline from ear to chin, and continued pushing his way through the crowd. I never saw him again.”
Such unsolicited touching would have been intrusive, if not utterly inappropriate, in most other environments. But for Garcia-Mispireta, the moment is a salient example of what he calls “stranger-intimacy,” a gesture that is simultaneously warm and impersonal. An interaction made permissible due to “corporeal copresence, a shared sensorium, and apparent aesthetic affinities.” Or as the academic author helpfully clarifies, “in the flesh, sharing space, atmosphere, and sensuous enjoyment.”
Contradictory behaviors like the one Garcia-Mispireta describes are common in subcultural communities like the underground house and techno scenes of Chicago, Paris and Berlin that serve as the focal point for Garcia-Mispireta’s 320-page study, full title, Together, Somehow: Music, Affect, and Intimacy on the Dancefloor, published this month by Duke University Press.
“My central argument in the book is that the vagueness of how we get together and get along is actually kind of how we continue to do it,” Garcia-Mispireta says on a Zoom call from the U.K., where he is an Associate Professor in Music at the University of Birmingham.
He continues, “It’s part of the way that nightlife scenes in general and club culture, rave culture specifically, manage this weird trick of bringing together crowds where there should be some significant reasons for fracturing and schisms. And instead, getting them to, not get along forever, but to hang out for a party and mostly not get on each other’s nerves.”
Pick up any book about electronic music (there aren’t very many to choose from) and the focus will inevitably be some version of the music’s historical narrative. Authors will make passing mention of the audience as part of the overall phenomenon while mainly focusing on the key artists, records and events that make up the chronological story. But none have delved this deeply into the physical contact that is as distinct to the overall experience of raving as the lights and music.
Take, for instance, Nick, a Chicago raver who told the author, “I’m definitely, to this day, more intimate with my friends in the techno scene than my other friends, in terms of touching, hugging, kissing.”
Or Lisette, a Paris raver who found herself “starved for touch,” according to Garcia-Mispireta, in her daily life in the reserved city.
And it’s not just personal touch that gets, er, touched on. Another chapter explores physical touch by musical soundwaves (“Sonic Tactility”), while others address the beautiful messiness of partying (“The Sweetness of Coming Undone”) and the less-beautiful exclusivity of clubbing (“Bouncers, Door Policies, and Embedded Diversity”). The author writes about each situation in a manner that is rigorous (and rigorously cited), considering psychological and sociological perspectives that leap from broadly human to deeply personal.
Technically, the boots-on-the-ground research conducted for this book took place from 2006-2010, in the cities listed in the subtitle. As such, the book can’t help but offer a window into the fallow decade between the Y2K crash and the EDM boom, when electronic music had largely retreated from mainstream attention.
“For the global North, that was when dance music was picking itself up from the 2000 bust — the end of the nineties,” Garcia-Mispireta explains. “2006 to 2010 was a period when there wasn’t actually a lot of money. Cities’ scenes like Paris and Chicago were struggling to organize events and get enough people out. And there wasn’t huge scrutiny from the outside.”
But documenting this slice of electronic music history is not the focus of Together, Somehow. And despite Garcia-Mispireta’s first-hand accounting, the book is not a memoir or exposé. It is an academic study categorized by its publisher as research in gender and sexuality, LGBTQ studies, music, ethnomusicology, cultural studies and affect theory. As such, you’re more likely to encounter the names of cited researchers in its pages rather than any of the DJs or producers who thrived in this era.
The names of clubs like Berghain (Berlin), SmartBar (Chicago) and Le Rex (Paris) are mentioned with regularity, but this is due to ethnographic rigor rather than the historical importance of specific venues. The fieldwork is balanced out by interviews with individuals conducted outside of the club environment.
The combination of theory, history and first-hand accounting makes Together, Somehow highly readable as far as academic books go. This was important to Garcia-Mispireta so that the book’s readership might extend beyond his fellow academics and into the community it analyzes.
“This is first and foremost an academic book,” he admits. “But I do want this to be a book where the community can see themselves. That’s why the flow is anecdote or vignette, then shift to theorizing, then shift back to storytelling, and so on.”
Luis Manuel Garcia-Mispireta
Courtesy Photo
The author is qualified to accomplish his dual agenda better than most because he is a card-carrying member of the community he studies. A “queer-presenting Latino dude” who sports gauged earrings and favors brightly-colored clothing that conflicts with the all-black aesthetic that dominates the techno scene, Garcia-Mispireta discovered raves growing up in Toronto, and went on to combine his passion for parties with his academic interest — the latter enabling the former via grants and post-doc positions.
His previous publications include articles with titles like “Techno-Tourism and Postindustrial Neo-Romanticism in Berlin’s Electronic Dance Music Scenes,” “Agonistic Festivities: Urban Nightlife Scenes and the Sociability of ‘Anti-Social’ Fun” and “Whose Refuge, This House? The Estrangement of Queers of Color in Electronic Dance Music.” He also writes for Resident Advisor (check out 2013’s “An Alternate History of Sexuality in Club Culture”) and gives lectures on subjects like “Bouncers, Door Policies, Multiculturalism.”
In 2014, Garcia-Mispireta helped establish Room 4 Resistance, a Berlin-based collective whose parties were among the first to put issues of “collective care, harm reduction, accessibility and experimentation” front and center. Some of R4R’s innovations, such as posting a highly–visible Code of Conduct in venues or having a taxi fund to help at-risk attendees get home safely, have become common practice for promoters around the world.
Garcia-Mispireta acknowledges that some of the light-touch intimacy he writes about in Together, Somehow might be seen to conflict with the safer spaces he works to create with R4R. He is careful to caveat the fine line between stranger intimacy and offensive behavior.
“I always want to keep in mind that there is tons of creepy-ass touching on the dance floor,” he states. “But nonetheless, as I talk to people, especially folks who were most likely to be vulnerable to bad touch — women, trans folks, folks of color, what have you — they would say ‘I have clear boundaries about this. And at the same time, these are the clubs I go to where I can be open with my body.’”
He proceeds to point out the interview subjects in the book for whom dance floor intimacy offers up a positive experience that is otherwise missing from their life.
“Often, there was initially a period of discomfort if they were new to these sort of norms around touch,” he explains. “But for some people, they’ve awoken to an appetite for a kind of human contact that they didn’t get elsewhere.”
Like all things involving humans, the behavior Garcia-Mispireta studies is nuanced. And messy. And constantly changing as culture evolves. Fortunately, researchers like him are working to identify these knotty interactions, even if the ultimate goal isn’t to untangle them. In a world where people are increasingly divided, the appeal of togetherness is hard to ignore.
“My argument is that a lot of [intimacy on the dance floor] happens precisely because we don’t actually know all that much about each other,” he concludes. “We’re happy to sort of sit with that kind of strangerhood within the space of the party.”
Courtesy Photo
Throughout the summer of 2023, London’s Globe Theatre brought to life the ribald fantasy world of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, one of William Shakespeare’s best-loved comedies. Each night, as the sun disappeared beneath the moss-covered rim of the open-air theatre, a troupe of dexterous pros delivered the words of Western world’s most famous author just a stone’s throw from the Thames River. As befitting the 16th century source material, the production featured fairies, forests, iambic pentameter and men running around in baggy pantaloons — plus, club music pulsating in the background.
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No, the Globe Theatre isn’t a victim of noise pollution — the thumping dance music was an intentional choice in the Elle While-directed production, which tapped composer James Maloney to deliver a few sonic surprises for this production of the 1590s play. Needless to say, Shakespeare (or Marlowe, if you’re a conspiracy theorist) wasn’t a known rave enthusiast, but what’s even more surprising is that everything you hear during a Globe performance is purely acoustic — meaning there’s no knobs, speakers or motherboards lending these dancefloors vibes to the Bard of Avon’s words.
So how do a handful of musicians using zero electronics create a soundscape that could pass for the 3am DJ set wafting out of a London hotspot like Fabric or Heaven? “It was simple, but it took a bit of workshopping,” Dream composer James Maloney insists to Billboard over coffee on a balmy afternoon. The formally trained, West Midlands-born head of music at the Globe may be a just a touch humble. After all, his techniques are not exactly intuitive – or even easy for the layman to understand. For the club music effect, Maloney directed a tubist to play on the off beats while an orchestral bass drummer softly accompanied a player on the double kick drum: “When the kick drum plays, the volume of the bass goes down, creating the womp-womp, which has become a signature of dance music,” he clarifies. (Elementary, right?)
The 2023 production of Dream offered numerous outside-the-box aural delights, including “droney, ethereal sounds” elicited by rubber balls brushed over metal sheets, as well as a disorienting zhing effect created by a metal rod slapped against “a piece of a lorry we found knocking about a workshop.” All of this – not the mention the Charlie Mingus-influenced jazz that opens the production – lends this version of the classic “a slightly menacing, chaotic edge” that prevents it from feeling like a recurring Dream you’ve experienced before.
“You have to be playful and experimental,” Maloney says of his approach to the production’s score. When asked if some patrons object to the inclusion of modern sounds in a centuries-old play written by England’s most revered scribe, Maloney looks off and responds diplomatically. “Naturally, people can have an opinion about what it should be, and occasionally there’s a sense of, ‘It should be more this, less this.’ But the way I approach it is that the Globe is and has always been a bit of an experiment.”
It’s undeniable that the Globe as it stands today is not your grandfather’s grandfather’s grandfather’s (and so on) Globe. The original theatre burned down in 1613, and the second Globe that Shakespeare built was torn up sometime in the 1640s. In 1997, this theater – which is a meticulous reconstruction of the original – opened to much fanfare but uncertain long-term prospects. It was a gamble that paid off: In a city stuffed with historical attractions, it’s emerged as a top tourist destination, drawing international visitors and thousands of U.K. citizens who live outside of London. So even if some bristle at the contemporary flourishes, the inventiveness of Globe’s high-caliber productions makes amends ere long.
“Some people come to nearly every performance, and I mean that literally,” Maloney says. One high-profile example: Art-rock icon Kate Bush saw the Globe’s 2013 version of Dream more than a dozen times; she even subsequently used the production’s choreographer, Siân Williams, as the movement director for her 2014 residency at the Hammersmith Apollo in London.
So, to borrow a phrase coined by Shakespeare, the long and the short of it is that the Globe Theatre has paved a brick-lane path that evokes history but isn’t a prisoner to it, which allows the crew and players the opportunity to interpret hallowed material in novel ways.
Michelle Terry as Puck in A Midsummer Night’s Dream at Shakespeare’s Globe.
Helen Murray
The recent production of Dream is a testament to this. While the play has inspired everything from Hollywood flicks to a George Balanchine ballet to music from Felix Mendelssohn, the 2023 iteration somehow manages to deliver a fresh take on the source material. Most stage versions depict an orderly Athens that’s juxtaposed with a whimsical forest. In the hands of While’s production, Athens is a bit of a party town, imbued with a barely restrained libido. As Maloney puts it, “The forest is to Athens like a smoking area is to a club.” With that in mind, Maloney went about crafting music and sonic cues that are “a strange refraction of senses and sounds,” conjuring “the idea of a night club next door where you can just hear the music.”
Maloney’s experimental bent might be a symptom of his unusual road to working in a world-renown theater. “Where I’m from, there’s very little with regards to theater,” he says of his upbringing outside Birmingham. “It never felt like an option. Music didn’t really, either, except for the fact that I could study it.” After poring over music composition during his time at Oxford, he graduated in 2011, moved to Paris and began working at a bakery. When an Internet listing for a music-related job at the Globe caught his eye, he sent in an application with no expectations, figuring his music background was “too formal” and his lack of theater credentials would prove to be a nonstarter. To his surprise, he heard back, returned to London for an interview and got the gig.
As it turned out, theater experience wasn’t exactly necessary for the position he occupied when he started at the Globe in 2013 – it was a lot of photocopying, tea fetching and other operational tasks. After several years of working “in a creative environment without doing creative stuff,” he channeled his energy into recording Gaslight, a DIY album of minimalist, meditative music, at his parents’ house. In what Maloney describes as “an act of enormous generosity,” the acclaimed theater director Matthew Dunster – who worked at the Globe from 2015-2017 – was impressed enough with his side hustle that he asked Maloney to help with some of the music on a 2016 production of Cymbeline, titled Imogen. Following that, Maloney was invited to score a 2017 Globe staging of Much Ado About Nothing, which “changed everything” for him.
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Now, Maloney regularly composes scores for Shakespearean productions (in addition to other theatrical gigs) while maintaining his role as head of music at the Globe Theatre. The latter position is a jack-of-all-trades job that involves finding musicians proficient in unusual instruments (while his scores veer toward the modern, many other Globe productions include antiquated instruments like the sackbut and shawm), troubleshooting rough patches during rehearsals and assisting other composers with the unexpected challenges endemic to composing music for an open-air space with exclusively acoustic instruments.
“The most surprising thing that you, as a composer, go through [when working on a Globe production] is the process where you cease to be a musician and become, for want of a better expression, a theater maker. You find yourself sacrificing musical ideas for dramatic decisions. You have to say, ‘That bit of your music that’s your favorite bit, we’re not doing it, because it doesn’t work with the storytelling.’ Or, ‘It’s too loud, you can’t hear the actor.’
“You’re the person sacrificing, because you instinctively know the production works better without it,” he continues. “It’s not just the music – it’s broader than that. It’s such an intense, exhausting experience. Saying 400-year-old words and dressing up, it’s not brain surgery — but it feels important when you’re doing it and there’s all these personalities and vulnerabilities in a room. It’s very meaningful.”
Five years ago, Lil Wayne sat down in his Miami recording studio and spoke in depth with Billboard for the first time in almost a decade. The trailblazing rapper and entrepreneur stood at a crossroads: On the verge of releasing what he had declared would be his final album, Tha Carter V, he had finally settled the three-year lawsuit against his former label Cash Money that had delayed the project’s release and just been awarded sole ownership of the Young Money imprint he had launched in 2003.
So as Aug. 11 — the 50th anniversary of hip-hop — fast approaches alongside Young Money’s own 20th birthday, it’s fitting to be sitting down with Lil Wayne once again. One of the genre’s most innovative and still influential artists, the 40-year-old Louisianian occupies a unique vantage point, forged during a now nearly 30-year journey that began in 1997 with the New Orleans group Hot Boys and soon grew into a multimillion-selling solo career. And that’s not counting the still-growing list of hit collaborations he’s had with a diverse array of fellow hip-hop and R&B artists — including Drake, Nicki Minaj, Future, 2 Chainz, Chris Brown, Mary J. Blige and Lil Baby — as well as other intrepid pairings with artists up and down the genre aisles: Madonna, Ariana Grande, Justin Bieber, Imagine Dragons, Fall Out Boy, Romeo Santos and Shakira, among others. In the course of hip-hop’s own evolution, Wayne’s career is a bridge between then and now, between the genre’s storied, hard-won past and its next-gen, global future.
Young Money Records executive vp/GM Karen Civil, who began running Wayne’s label and several additional portfolios — including his rum brand, Bumbu, and his underwear line, Ethika — in March, says that she also looks at him “as a tree, a foundation. Through the years, we’ve seen different branches blossom, from Nicki and Drake to his businesses, including Young Money, and his relationship with [label president] Mack Maine. A lot of people know Drake and Wayne. But he’s set up so many other people — Tyga is one — who have given him his flowers, like, ‘You’re the reason I rap.’ Those moments mean a lot because he loves to see people around him win.”
Producer-rapper Swizz Beatz has personally witnessed Wayne’s evolution from the time when, as he recalls, they were both “the youngest ones” on the Cash Money and Ruff Ryders tour in 2000. “I knew he was special then, and he’s definitely special now,” continues Swizz, who has collaborated with Wayne for more than 20 years. “It takes a special eye and ear to see a Drake before he’s Drake or a Nicki before she’s Nicki … or the many other artists he’s been involved with who are some of the biggest artists alongside himself to date. That comes from his investment of time, his eye, energy and business sense. He’s responsible for this generation of music.”
Before he could provide a foundation for others, Wayne had to build his own. Over his career, he’s notched five No. 1 albums on the Billboard 200 and 12 top 10s. Tha Carter III, released in 2008, spent three weeks at No. 1 — making it the Wayne album with the most weeks at that perch — and has racked up 221 weeks total on the chart, the most of any of his releases; in September 2022, the RIAA recertified it at eight times platinum.
On the Billboard Hot 100, the five-time Grammy winner has claimed a total of 25 top 10s — including gems “A Milli”; “She Will,” featuring Drake; and “6 Foot 7 Foot,” featuring Cory Gunz — and three No. 1s: “Lollipop,” featuring Static Major (Wayne’s first RIAA diamond track, certified in December); Jay Sean’s “Down,” featuring Wayne; and DJ Khaled’s star-studded “I’m the One,” which, along with Wayne’s guest spot, also features Justin Bieber, Quavo and Chance the Rapper. With 185 total Hot 100 entries — up from 138 just five years ago — Wayne has the fourth-most songs on the chart ever behind Drake, Taylor Swift and the Glee cast.
“Wayne is definitely somebody who continues to create his own blueprint from rap to rock,” says Civil. “I just love the fact that he doesn’t put himself in one category. He continues to reinvent himself and do new things — like becoming a professional skateboarder at 40. He doesn’t put an age limit on things. He doesn’t allow a title, a job or one career set to define him. Seeing the plethora of different people, from [Lil Uzi Vert] to YoungBoy [Never Broke Again] to others who are creating their own genres and sounds, is a testament to Wayne creating that lane.”
Balenciaga T-shirt and jacket, Peter Marco jewelry, Louis Vuitton eyewear.
Ramona Rosales
And it certainly no longer looks like the ever-busy multihyphenate — who has released an album and two mixtapes since Tha Carter V — will stop recording any time soon; “retirement be damned” seems to now be his motto. According to Civil, Wayne has “quite a few singles” in the pipeline as both lead and featured artist. He and 2 Chainz are currently collaborating on ColleGrove II, the sequel to their 2016 collaboration. Though no release date has been set, Tha Carter VI is also in the works. Wayne recently wrapped 30 dates on his Welcome to Tha Carter Tour, where Drake, Chance the Rapper, Cam’ron and 2 Chainz made special appearances.
And he was in his element opening the ESPY Awards in July with an apropos performance of his 2008 hit “A Milli.” “He was being a true artist, rearranging the words to the song to make sure that it was curated to the event,” Swizz Beatz notes. “I thought that was genius.”
Meanwhile, Wayne continues to develop hip-hop’s next generation of talent, working with Civil and Maine to build his Young Money roster, which includes Allan Cubas, Drizzy P, Euro, Jay Jones, Lil Twist, Mellow Rackz and Yaj Kader.
“Wayne is the ultimate outlier. There was nobody in the history of the genre who sounded like him, looked like him, or released music like him. Everybody caught his wave and just tried to hang on for dear life,” says Republic Records founder and COO Avery Lipman (Young Money is distributed through Republic/Universal Music Group.) “It goes without saying he’s one of the greatest artists of all time, but he’s also one of the most visionary businessmen this industry has ever seen.”
It’s a humble, humorous, polite (“thank you, Miss Gail”), self-deprecating and brief, to-the-point Lil Wayne who sits down once again today with Billboard — this time in West Hollywood — to reflect on his legacy and hip-hop’s future against the backdrop of the genre’s 50th anniversary. With a disarming and sly, diamond-studded grin, Wayne underscores his deep-rooted love of hip-hop. “In my mind, every single time I say the word ‘work,’ I ask God to forgive me,” he says. “Cuz I know this has never been a job. It’s just a dream come true.”
Looking back on your career thus far, what does this momentous anniversary mean to you — and to hip-hop itself — since naysayers initially dismissed the fledgling genre as a fad?
I think it probably means more to me than I even know, because I am still in it, a deep part of it, and I’m still learning every day. Hip-hop will never be over. But I also think that maybe down the line, I’ll be able to answer that question better because I don’t think I know how much it means to me yet — because it means that much.
You signed with Cash Money before you were even a teen. Did you know that early that you could build a career as a rap artist?
I’ve been rapping since I was 7, actually. And I signed my deal when I was 11. I didn’t think about nothing else other than “We about to be the biggest everything.” (Laughs.) Like, I’m about to be this … I’m about to date her. I’m about to do … (Laughs again.) I was a kid, you know? It was like, what are you going [to want] for Christmas? As far as unforgettable moments go [back then], I would say that was probably my first time grabbing a mic as a kid at a block party, breaking my fear and rapping stuff that I had rapped in the mirror for, like, thousands of hours the night before.
Ethika T-shirt; Balenciaga jacket, pants and shoes; Peter Marco jewelry; Emotionally Unavailable hat.
Ramona Rosales
So given your early vantage point, what are the biggest changes you’ve seen happen in hip-hop?
Right now is the time where I see the most change in our genre, because back then, I think it was just progress more than change; progression from what was already set before us and also us honoring what was set before us. But now it’s not that no one’s honoring what was before them — it’s just that the world has changed thanks to social media. There was no such thing as social media when I started doing this. But social media has changed the genre and opened doors. That’s definitely what helped contribute to its going global. [Social media] is good and bad.
Want to give examples of the good and the bad?
No. (Laughs.)
What has been the hardest part of your journey?
The hardest part for me is not being able to do [my music], for whatever reason. Not being able to record. Not being able to tour or do a show. That’s always the hardest part.
What one career lesson have you carried along since the beginning?
Never, never stop learning. That’s how you humble yourself. Humility goes a long way and it’ll keep you learning. I just try to get better and better and better.
Did you ever subscribe to the notion that hip-hop is only a young man’s game?
No, never. Because when I was growing up, all the rappers were way older than me. So I don’t know what that notion or narrative was, because it was never a young man’s game to me. I’ve always felt I had to fight my way in when I was a young man.
You’ve mapped a blueprint in terms of musical innovation and entrepreneurial pursuits like your Trukfit fashion line, the Young Money APAA Sports agency, the cannabis brand GKUA Ultra Premium and other business ventures. How do you perceive the role you’ve played in that aspect of rap’s evolution?
Expanding yourself and becoming a brand, getting involved in other businesses … the small part that I’ve played is probably just setting an example for those watching me and those coming after me. And with that said, I got that from watching Jay-Z, Reverend Run and Russ [Simmons] move. How they never stopped and just evolved, [especially] the way Jay has evolved. (Laughs.) I’m trying to follow stuff like that. And hopefully those coming up under me will follow my footsteps.
Do you have a wish list of other business opportunities you’d like to pursue?
Oh, no. I don’t have a list. You limit yourself when you put a list together. (Laughs.) But I can guarantee there has to be a feeling that makes me go forward with any [business] decision that I make. So therefore I know that it is organic.
You underscored your electric stage presence with 2010’s Rebirth, your creative leap into rock after ventures into blending rap with pop and singing. What influence has that had on next-gen artists with similar vibes, like Lil Uzi Vert, Travis Scott, Young Thug and Trippie Redd?
Sometimes people ask me how I feel about everybody looking like me, everybody getting tattoos, etc. That’s like seeing your kid come out of the room and looking just like you; it feels amazing. So the visible influence is kind of obvious because I know for a fact I didn’t get this look from anyone. There was no one that inspired this look. I just ran into looking like this. (Laughs.) But other than that, I hope that my work ethic [is influential as well].
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How would you describe your work ethic? You seem like a 24/7 studio guy.
Exactly. So when other artists get around me, you know, they can smell that. It is impossible for them not to. And whenever they leave, they leave with something, as they remember that smell. And hopefully it does something for them.
So is your phone ringing off the hook with people asking you for advice?
No, not advice, not at all. That’s because they don’t have my number. (Laughs.) I have three sons and a beautiful daughter who get the advice.
On Billboard’s recent GOAT list of hip-hop’s top 50 artists, you landed at No. 7, between The Notorious B.I.G. at No. 6 and Drake at No. 8. What did you think of your placement?
That’s awesome. You would be happy to be anywhere on that list.
So which rappers would be in the top five of your own GOAT list?
There’s no specific order, but it’s simple. For me, it’s always been Missy Elliott, Jay-Z, UGK, Goodie Mob and Biggie.
Why those five? What’s the throughline for you in terms of their place in the genre’s evolution?
It’s because I organically grew up on [them]. You know, when you’re asked, “How’d you start listening?,” there’s a story for everybody … like, someone I know told me to start listening or whatever. But like I said, every decision I make is organic.
What does it take to break new hip-hop artists today?
Today, you have to know social media. If you don’t, you have to have a team that does. That said, the main thing today is what it has been yesterday and the day before yesterday: You just have to have real talent. Real, everlasting and undeniable talent. That’s how you still break an artist. Once you find that in an artist, then use and highlight that as much as you can, because it’s hard. There are lots of artists that want to be exactly what they see [and hear] on social media. They just want to be that instead of being what they actually can be. So get them to believe in what they are and what they truly can be. And even if it is a challenge, that challenge has always been one of the most fun things ever for me. I love it.
What exactly do you say or do when working with and developing new artists, since, as you just said, it’s so difficult to rise above everything that’s out there?
That you have to be at least good in whatever genre that you’re attacking, whether it’s hip-hop or not. And then you have to be willing to work as hard as you can to turn that good around into great. So come high at me, and you’ll be talking about the greatest. It’s that plain and simple. There are no keys. You just need to believe in what you’ve got and what you’re attacking, if you believe in it. Show me. Think harder, you know? Challenge yourself.
Ramona Rosales
What’s been your own secret to longevity?
I don’t have a secret. I just work. I just keep going. I never stop. It’s just the work ethic, plain and simple. No more, no less; I don’t do nothing but my music. And also, in my mind, every single time I say the word “work,” I ask God to forgive me. Cuz I know this has never been a job. It’s just a dream come true. So that’s why I’ve never stopped.
Is it difficult for you to say that to someone who’s not there yet?
Not at all. I can’t tell any other artists that. But if you’re my artist, oh hell, yeah. I’ll let them know. You better go do that sh-t again. (Laughs.)
What are your thoughts on the growing ranks of women rappers? Why has it taken so long for this to happen?
My answer would be, honestly, that it just wasn’t as interesting to women, I don’t think, in the way that Nicki [Minaj], Meg [Megan Thee Stallion] and others are. It’s awesome. I don’t think they looked at or viewed it as something that they wanted to do and actually make a living from it. That’s another part of it. They probably didn’t look at this as something that they could make a living out of.
And perhaps the industry has become a bit more open-minded, too?
Oh, yeah. Definitely. We’re here for everything now.
Where is the future of hip-hop headed — any trends that you’re noticing?
Obviously, always up and bigger and better. Also, what I’m seeing now is the art and the ultimate artist being able to do anything. It’s like when you and I were talking about basketball. Back then, we were looking for a Kareem [Abdul-Jabbar]; if you were tall, we wanted you in the paint. Not even knowing how to shoot a three-pointer; we didn’t even want to see that. Now we’ve got these seven-footers coming in, and we need you [to] know how to dribble like Allen Iverson, how to shoot like Steph Curry. You need to know how to defend like GP [Gary Payton]. And that’s the ultimate artist. I believe that that’s where the genre is headed: artists able to do everything — from singing to tapping into different emotions.
What’s your opinion on artificial intelligence and its potential effect on creativity?
Someone asked me about that recently. And they were trying to tell me that AI could make a voice that sounds just like me. But it’s not me, because I’m amazing. I’m like, is this AI thing going to be amazing too? Because I am naturally, organically amazing. I’m one of a kind. So actually, I would love to see that thing try to duplicate this motherf–ker.
In the wake of AI and other emerging technology, have mixtapes lost their relevance?
The terminology or definition has changed, that’s all. Mixtapes can mean an album mix or anything now. But when it comes to Lil Wayne, everybody knows how I approach mixtapes. So my mixtapes won’t ever change.
Any hints as to what fans can expect when you perform Aug. 11 at the hip-hop 50th anniversary concert at Yankee Stadium?
Do not set expectations for me, because I will always exceed them. So just go there with a clear mind, expect the best — and I’ll be better than that.
This story will appear in the Aug. 5, 2023, issue of Billboard.
Peso Pluma arrives slightly early to his own birthday party. He’s dressed in Dior from head to toe, but still looks casual in a long-sleeve button-down overshirt stamped with the designer’s oblique logo, dark jeans and black sneakers with white shoelaces. The famously punctual birthday boy, who’s turning 24 today (June 15), tours the venue — a gorgeous hidden garden just south of Guadalajara in Jalisco, Mexico, that’s overflowing with trees and sparkly chandeliers — to ensure his vision for the party has been executed. Amid the greenery is a makeshift club with a stage, a dancefloor surrounded by tables and couches, and a huge light-up bar that’s impossible to miss. Pretty much what one would expect a 20-something’s birthday party vibe to be like.
But his childhood dreams have also come to life here. Branching off the club area, there’s a sweets room with all sorts of Mexican candy and, separately, another room for all things savory, with countless bags of chips — from Takis to Ruffles to Tostitos — and an array of toppings like melted cheddar cheese, chile piquín, lime and corn. Piñatas, including one of Peso himself and another of Spider-Man (a childhood favorite), hang from the ceilings, and Peso flashes a pearly white, almost mischievous ear-to-ear smile when he sees them. “It’s exactly how I envisioned it,” he says with satisfaction.
He could say the same of his now globe-spanning career. The artist born Hassan Emilio Kabande Laija is at the forefront of Mexican music, leading the genre’s seismic growth in the United States and beyond with his signature corridos tumbados — a variety of the corrido (storytelling ballad) that often flaunts a chill yet lavish, weed-centric lifestyle. Raw, nasally and raspy, Peso’s distinctive vocals punctuate a sound powered by a requinto acoustic guitar, tololoche (a stringed bass instrument), charcheta (an alto horn) and trombone. And he remains a creative chameleon: Outside of corridos, he has recorded heartbreak and ultra-romantic songs, too.
Neither his voice nor sound are those of a typical pop star, but right now, Peso is one of the biggest artists in the world. To date, he has over 700 million on-demand official streams in the United States, according to Luminate, and 18 entries on the Billboard Hot 100 — including the blockbuster hit “Ella Baila Sola” with Eslabon Armado, which made history as the first regional Mexican song to enter the top five on the all-genre chart. In June, he became the first artist to ever lead both the Billboard Global 200 and Billboard Global Excl. U.S. lists simultaneously with different songs: the sierreño anthem “Ella Baila Sola” and his Bizarrap-produced track “Bzrp Music Sessions, Vol. 55.” His new album, Génesis, debuted at No. 3 on the Billboard 200 (dated July 1) — the highest rank ever for a música mexicana album on the chart.
“My life has changed a lot,” says Peso, who recalls that his first shows in Mexico just last year were attended by 500 people. (These days, he’s performing in arenas for upwards of 10,000.) Since his first hit, “El Belicón” with Raúl Vega, entered Billboard’s Hot Latin Songs chart in April 2022, he has landed 12 top 10 songs on the list, all in 2023 — the most for any regional Mexican act this year. Now, just days before releasing Génesis, he’s back in Mexico after spending the first half of 2023 on the road. In April, amid a brief run of U.S. dates, he performed at Coachella as a guest for Becky G’s set and then flew to New York to play “Ella Baila Sola” on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon. He has also visited Colombia, Chile and the Dominican Republic, where he recorded collaborations with Blessd, Nicki Nicole and El Alfa, respectively.
“Now my life is my work, and I live for this,” he says. Peso doesn’t come from a family of musicians and is notoriously private about his family life but shares that his “familia trabajadora (hardworking family)” instilled that go-getter mentality in him at a young age. “I’m very happy to do what I love doing the most and to be able to share a message of perseverance with up-and-coming artists. Sometimes, as Mexicans, we put a lot of barriers on ourselves and we lack the confidence. Today, I see that people are proud of our movement. Back then, they’d think that Mexicans couldn’t have a No. 1 song singing corridos and that regional Mexican music was only regional, not global. Today, all those barriers have been broken.”
Lust T-shirt, Bottega Veneta vest, Palm Angels jeans, A Bathing Ape sneakers, Off-White eyewear.
Mary Beth Koeth
Born on the outskirts of Guadalajara, Peso Pluma — who at one point dreamed of becoming a professional soccer player — was fully immersed in corridos as a kid, listening to artists such as late sierreño star Ariel Camacho and Los Alegres del Barranco. “It’s what my uncles and family in Sinaloa [Mexico] would listen to,” he says. He spent time as a teen in New York and attended high school in San Antonio (he is bilingual, though he spoke in Spanish for this interview), and his exposure to different pockets of the continent influenced his diverse musical palette.
“Peso Pluma is really a combination of everything I like, of all the cities I’ve lived in, cultures I’ve come to know. It has all helped me,” he says. “When I went to the United States, I was listening to Kanye [West], Drake, Kendrick Lamar — it’s actually because of their songs that I learned to speak English. I’d come home from school and study their lyrics to try to understand the references they were making.” During a visit to New Orleans, he fell in love with jazz and the trombone, now a key instrument in his sound. He began writing his own lyrics in a diary-style notebook around the age of 15. Inspired by Camacho, who became a generational hero after his untimely death at age 22 in a 2015 car accident, Peso also learned to play guitar by watching YouTube videos. “There’s corridos in which you’ll hear me rap,” he says. “My music is inspired by many cultures, and that’s what I love about it.”
It was that versatility that struck George Prajin most when he met Peso in 2019 through one of his former artists, regional Mexican singer Jessie Morales, who performs as El Original de la Sierra. Although impressed with Peso’s previously released recordings, he didn’t sign him then, which was a “mistake,” says Prajin. So instead, Peso signed with Jessie’s brother, Herminio Morales — but, two years later, “Herminio called me saying he wasn’t doing well with his health and asked me to basically take on the project,” the Los Angeles-based Prajin explains. “I got a second opportunity.”
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For many years, Prajin had been looking for an artist who could successfully fuse hip-hop and corridos. As the son of Antonio Z. Prajin, owner of music retailer and distributor Prajin One-Stop, “I saw that a lot of the kids in the ’90s would buy corridos but also buy hip-hop. Back then, it was The Notorious B.I.G. or 2Pac and Chalino Sánchez. I always thought that I could invent some fusion that would be the biggest thing on the planet. When I met Peso, I thought, ‘Maybe this is the way that we’re going to get this done.’ ”
While Peso loved an array of genres, he was very clear about how he didn’t want to sound. “I remember he told me, ‘If I’m going to record reggaetón, then it has to be an all-reggaetón song. If I’m going to do a rap song, it has to be a rap song. Same with regional,’ ” says Prajin. “At first, I was like, ‘Wow, are you sure?’ But now I understand why: because he can own each one of those genres. He’s that versatile, and he’s that good. He knows what he’s doing and knows exactly what he wants. That’s when I said, ‘Take the lead, Peso.’ ”
Peso Pluma didn’t reach the summit of Mexican music on his own — and he wouldn’t have it any other way. Of his 20 songs to appear on the Hot 100 this year, 18 are collaborations, with young artists like Natanael Cano, who in the late 2010s pioneered the corridos tumbados (trap corridos) subgenre; sierreño powerhouse Junior H; and corridos singer Luis R Conriquez.
“It’s beautiful to see that if I invite Luis R or Nata to sing with me at a show or on my album, they’re there. We all may be prideful and have an ego, but we’re there for each other,” Peso says confidently. He knows that collaborations have been key in the recent rise of regional Mexican music. “At the end of the day, they’re not doing this for me — they’re doing it for the culture of Mexican music. We’re coming together to help this grow because that’s what they did with reggaetón. All the artists came together to grow the genre, and later, they were able to be successful on their own.”
Supreme jacket, Balenciaga T-shirt, Burberry shorts, Nike socks and sneakers, Off-White eyewear.
Mary Beth Koeth
According to Luminate, regional Mexican music consumption in the United States jumped 42.1% year to date through May 25, outpacing gains in the Latin genre overall, as well as country, dance/electronic, rock and pop. Only K-pop — up 49.4% year to date — has performed better this year than regional Mexican. About 99% of regional Mexican consumption comes from streaming. “For the past five years, we’ve seen numbers rising for the Mexican music genre,” says Maykol Sánchez, head of artist and label partnerships for Latin America and U.S. Latin at Spotify. During the past five years, the genre grew by 604% in Mexico, compared with 212% in the United States and over 400% globally.
Even within that context of astounding growth, Peso’s numbers are stunning. From June 2022 to June 2023, his average daily listeners increased by 4,341% and his average daily streams increased by 10,792%. “Música mexicana has gone through a similar evolution that reggaetón also went through when it blew up; [the artists have] modernized the way they look, the way they write lyrics, creating a movement for their generation. It has been a long time coming, and Mexican being such a strong culture in the U.S. with the population, it just makes sense,” Sánchez says.
With nearly 40 million residents of Mexican origin, the United States is home to the world’s second-largest Mexican community, which comprises over one-half of America’s overall Latin population. “Mexican music is now pop culture,” says AJ Ramos, head of artist partnerships for Latin music and culture at YouTube. “We’re seeing it because of the power of the Mexican diaspora, the connection between the U.S. and Mexico. The culture is here and the users are here. Artists from other Latin subgenres now have to start collaborating with them to have a hit.”
Thanks to massive team-ups like “Ella Baila Sola” with Eslabon Armado and his Bizarrap session, Peso has had No. 1s on YouTube’s global Top Songs chart in markets including Mexico, Colombia, El Salvador, Italy and Spain and is on track to be one of the 10 most viewed artists globally this year, according to the video streaming platform. “In 2018, one or two songs a week [from the genre] were entering the U.S. Top Songs chart; now the genre represents 25% of the chart,” YouTube music trends manager Kevin Meenan says.
Amiri hoodie and hat, Cartier eyewear.
Mary Beth Koeth
Regional Mexican music, an umbrella term comprising banda, corridos, norteño, sierreño, mariachi and other subgenres, has been a pillar of Latin music for decades. In the past year, the genre, which has been around for over 150 years, has exploded in popularity worldwide, reaching a broader audience after being long considered music solely for Mexican and Mexican American audiences. Back in the day, the music was heavily stigmatized, considered música de rancho (rancho music), and its listeners were often stereotyped as uneducated or poor.
That’s no longer the case, explains Pepe Garza, head of content development and A&R for media company Estrella Music Entertainment. “Young people in general aren’t as prejudiced as older generations, and they’re not judging each other about the music they’re listening to. That has been important to the genre’s growth.”
Now global forces like Bad Bunny and Colombian hit-maker Ovy on the Drums (Karol G’s longtime producer) are recording norteñas and corridos, respectively. “We had been so saturated with the same thing over and over again,” says Ovy on the Drums, who collaborated with Peso on “El Hechizo,” a corrido fused with Ovy’s signature dancehall beat. “Mexican music is huge right now, and not just with corridos — they’re also killing it with reggaetón. Enter Peso, who can do it all. Plus, he’s really good onstage. He has the whole package.”
Peso Pluma photographed on June 28, 2023 at Toe Jam Backlot in Miami.
Mary Beth Koeth
Peso’s high-energy performances are a spectacle. Singing live — usually clad in shorts and a T-shirt, his signature high socks, his favorite pair of white Air Force 1s and, at times, a Spider-Man mask — he tirelessly dances and jumps along to songs with the backing of a riveting live band. He’s a dynamo who feeds off his equally energetic, multigenerational fan base. When Becky G brought him out at Coachella, the crowd roared to greet him — an especially memorable reception, given that he was then an emerging global act.
“His tone is something that is hard to forget, and it instantly made me appreciate how unique he is as an artist,” says Becky G, who teamed up with Peso for “Chanel,” the first single off her upcoming Mexican music album. “But I also think he allows his personality to shine even more through his stage presence that’s equally as unique as he is. I went to go watch him perform at his first U.S. tour run, and his energy was so contagious — I think it plays a huge part in how much he connects with his fans.”
“Before Peso, there was Grupo Firme, who was doing big things for the genre, and before Grupo Firme, there was Banda MS,” Garza says. “It’s natural that new [regional Mexican] artists keep reaching new heights because they’re standing on the shoulders of the ones that came before them.” Peso is the latest evolution of regional Mexican stardom — fearless and revolutionary like those before him, but with a magnetic charm all his own.
It’s difficult to describe Peso Pluma’s haircut. Something like a mullet with a sideburn fade, it doesn’t exactly scream trend in the making. Yet, like all things Peso, it’s now in high demand.
“The other day, a barber from Mexico City called me and said, ‘Thank you for giving us so much work.’ Apparently, 24 people had requested ‘the Peso Pluma haircut’ in one day,” says Peso in shock. Even many on his own team haven’t heard the story of how he got that haircut in the first place. “I used to have long hair — think Justin Bieber back when he released ‘Baby,’ ” Peso recalls with a chuckle. “My hair is a superpower, so I’m very particular about who cuts my hair. On a trip to Medellín, Colombia, this barber said he was going to give me a haircut that is very popular in Medellín — he said, ‘Trust me, you’re going to love it.’ I hated it at first. I was like, ‘What did you do?’ Then I recorded a music video, and when I saw it, I was like, ‘Wait, actually, se ve bien perro [it looks really good].’ ”
So for now, he’s sticking with it — though he’s focused on influencing his followers in other ways. In April, he launched his own label, Double P Records, where he serves as CEO and head of A&R, as a subsidiary of his home label, Prajin Records. “I’m super happy to be able to help my friends because that’s how I see them. I don’t see them as my artists,” he explains. “More than anything, I want them to know that if I could do it, so can they. I’m on this journey with them; we’re paddling together. I tell them, ‘Learn from whatever is happening in my career. Take notes because I’m still growing just as you are.’ ” So far, those friends include Jasiel Nuñez, Tito Laija (Peso’s cousin and one of his co-writers) and Raúl Vega.
Starting a new label with Peso was a no-brainer, says Prajin, who also manages him. “I have that much faith in him,” Prajin adds. “When he saw that I really trusted him, he trusted me even more. We’ve never had boundaries. Everything he has ever wanted, every collab he has ever desired, we’ve made it happen. He definitely knows I have his back in terms of his career. I think, too, the way that we structured his deal — a lot of artists don’t make money until their second or third year. He’s making money in his first year. We’re partners, and I think he’s going to appreciate it even more when he sees not only that he’s making a lot of money, but he’s also keeping it.”
Mary Beth Koeth
While on his first-ever U.S. tour — which Prajin says had to be “renegotiated” with Live Nation to add dates following his rapid rise — Peso released Génesis in June. “I think of it as my debut album,” he says, adding that it features some of his “favorite” artists, including Cano, Junior H, Luis R and Nuñez. Following its release, it became Spotify’s all-time most streamed regional Mexican album in one day globally. Its strong streaming performance led to Peso placing a historic 25 simultaneous titles on the Hot Latin Songs chart (dated July 8), breaking Bad Bunny’s record of 24.
Although his first two albums were recorded more spur of the moment (and thus sound less professional), “I didn’t want to delete my previous albums because they represent my beginnings,” Peso says. “Those albums are the foundation of my castle. But I put all my effort into this new album, which includes songs to dance to, cry to, party to; there’s something for everyone. It’s a corridos album — or call them whatever you want: corridos verdes, tumbados, bélicos, because at the end of the day, it’s all Mexican music. It’s what I’m most proud of: that a Mexican song, a corrido, that isn’t pop can be No. 1 today.”
Globalizing Mexican music has been Peso’s goal since day one, and as he describes it, he’s just getting started. Performing at Coachella with Becky G was eye-opening for him, and he hopes to return to the festival next year to perform his own set. His manager says that’s already in the works, along with U.S. stadium dates in 2024, more collaborations with major Latin artists and eventually recording English-language songs with big names in the hip-hop world.
“I think people knew what corridos were because of Natanael and Bad Bunny’s collaboration [2019’s “Soy el Diablo”], but I really want artists from outside of our world to know what this music is all about,” says Peso enthusiastically. “Now that this has all exploded, everyone wants to do Mexican music. That’s how we globalize it: through key collaborations with artists who want to record our music.”
Mary Beth Koeth
His five-year plan isn’t set in stone but goes something like this: “I see myself working with artists and producers I’ve always dreamed of working with. I see myself winning a Grammy, breaking more records, but in five years, I see myself more like Hov, like Jay-Z, spending more time on the business side of it all and helping young artists achieve their dreams,” he says with determination.
For now, he’s OK with a different alter ego: Peter Parker, conveniently also a double P. “I always used to tell my friends that I was Peter Parker, and now it all makes sense,” says Peso with a smile. “Peter Parker is Hassan offstage, but Peso Pluma is Spider-Man when he goes onstage and fights against the bad guys of the world.”
At his birthday party, it was Hassan from Guadalajara who showed up — who only wanted to enjoy every second with his best buds, some of whom he hadn’t seen in months, whom he would greet with a big hug and a huge smile. Once the festivities began around 9 p.m., Peso quickly took the stage to introduce the first artist who would perform that night: not Peso Pluma, but his best friend, Jasiel Nuñez. “Let’s enjoy new talent,” he said, adding a quick reminder: “The point is that we all have fun here.”
This story will appear in the July 15, 2023, issue of Billboard.
It was August of 2011 and John Summit was a child standing in the pouring rain, having his little mind blown.
The producer, then 16 years old, was at Lollapalooza among a crowd of thousands, getting soaked while deadmau5 played onstage. A resident of the Chicago suburb of Naperville, Summit had trekked to downtown for the festival, with this deadmau5 set not only serving as his first electronic show, but a premonition of the path his life would take.
“I feel like everyone always has that moment when they’re like, ‘Oh my god, this is my genre,’” the producer says. “That’s when I knew I wanted to be a part of electronic music.”
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During the show there was one song in particular that struck Summit especially hard — a dreamy, moody, sort of sexy slow burn, “I Remember,” the 2008 classic by deadmau5 and Kaskade. “There was not a single phone in sight,” Summit recalls of this first time hearing this song. “Everyone was lost in the moment, and I’d never been to a concert like that before.”
After the show, Summit “listened to that record on repeat for like, a year straight” while getting further electronic music, becoming a regular at Michigan’s very heady Electric Forest, starting to DJ locally in Chicago and over time becoming one of the hottest names in the scene on the power of his scintillating live shows and tracks, including “Where You Are,” a March collab with vocalist Hayla that’s become the biggest hit of his career thus far.
Now 28, Summit has worked with a flurry of veterans, including Green Velvet, Dennis Ferrer, Diplo, Lee Foss and more, releasing a steady stream of music while touring relentlessly across continents, launching his own label and event series Off the Grid and offering up a more or less endless social media stream that highlight his goofy sense of humor and bananas lifestyle. Over Zoom, Summit moves around his recently purchased Miami high-rise condo, noting that up until a few months ago he was still living with a roommate in Chicago, having only come into money following his post-pandemic ascent.
“I was very fiscally conservative,” he says, turning the laptop camera out the window towards the beach, “but now I’m finally learning how to treat myself.”
Now, 12 years after hearing “I Remember” during that Midwestern deluge, Summit has released the track’s first official remix. His edit toughens up the vibey original and comes on the heels of deadmau5 regaining his back catalog from Ultra Records. The song, now 15 years old, is widely considered to be one of the greatest dance tracks of all time — instilling this project with, Summit concedes, “a lot of pressure.”
But the fact is that Summit has made everything he’s done so far look kind of easy, with this project taking on the same meant-to-be quality that’s defined the rest of his career. Here, he talks about making it all happen.
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How did you first connect with Kaskade and deadmau5’s teams for this remix?
It wasn’t until they came out with the “Escape” record as Kx5 with [vocalist] Hayla last year. The day that came out I was listening to it nonstop. I was up in Aspen for a show with my manager. We got drunk at night, and I was on my [Instagram] story just like belting it. Then Kaskade DMs me like, “Glad you’re liking the record. Would you be up to remix it?” That was the first time I ever talked them.
I’m six beers deep, and I’m like “f–k yeah, let’s do it.” The “Escape” remix ended up being the biggest remix of the year. That’s how I got connected with Hayla, and how we made “Where You Are,” which ended up being my biggest record of all time and which is still huge right now. From there, I got asked to do an Essential Mix for Pete Tong and BBC Radio. With an Essential Mix, you [work in] all your influences, and “I Remember” was the first song that got me into electronic music. I needed to make an edit of it for the Essential Mix to show my love, because I didn’t want to just use the original. [Kaskade and deadmau5] heard it in the Essential Mix and were like, “Let’s make this an official remix.”
But it’s also pretty crazy, right, given that this is the song that got you into electronic music. What does it mean to you that all this is happening?
It’s insane, because it happened so naturally. I didn’t have to beg or ask for any of this.
“I Remember” is basically a sacred text of dance music. How did you approach the remix?
It’s a lot of pressure. The one in my Essential Mix I just made that overnight while I was in Colombia. It was only one build and one drop. It was quick, only like, two minutes long. From there, I made, like, 50 different versions. I got super in my head, too. You can hear in all my sets for the last six months, there’s always a different version I’ve been playing out. I ended up combining two versions I made, so it’s the first track I’ve ever done that has two different drops, which is not typical for house music — where it’s a totally different kick drum, bass and everything. But it’s just because I was stuck between which one I liked more, so I was like, “Let’s just do both of them as one.”
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Were Kaskade or deadmau5 advising you while you were working on it?
No. They were like, “We trust you, just do whatever you want.” They didn’t micromanage me whatsoever. They know that if I’m playing it out and it’s working, they have trust that it’s good.
It’s such an ethereal track, and your remix maintains that — but you also toughened it up.
Yeah, exactly. It’s a more modern take on it. It’s still respecting the original, while putting my stamp on it. Which I think is the goal for a remix, right?
Do you have hopes for what it will do?
The hope is that it will revive the track. I’m not calling myself old, but I’m 28 now, and when you think of all the kids — especially the post-COVID kid ravers are 21, 22 — they’ve never even heard the original. When I play it out live, they think it’s an original track. I’m like “No, it’s a remix of a classic.” But 15 years ago, they would have been like, five years old.
I hadn’t really considered that part of it. You get to introduce this song to a whole new generation.
Exactly. While also putting my own stamp on it too, which I think is really cool.
What were Kaskade and and deadmau5’s reactions when they first heard your edit?
The first time Ryan heard it in the Essential Mix he just said, “Can you make it hit a little bit harder live?” That’s why I have the one drop where it’s just the kick and bass and it has a huge synth on the drop, to make it work for festivals and stuff. Tying everything together too is that on August 5, me and him are headlining HARD Summer together. That’s gonna be by far my biggest show to date. It’s at the L.A. Coliseum, which is where I opened up for [Kx5 last December] when I premiered “Where You Are.” There’s gonna be like, 60,000 people, so that’ll be nuts.
You’ve been adopted, for lack of a better word, by some of the pioneers — Kaskade, Lee Foss, Green Velvet, Diplo. Do you feel like the next gen? What’s the relationship with these artists?
Yeah, that’s a good question. What makes it new and next gen is that my fanbase and community is so different than theirs. Mine is very young and very vocal on social media and Twitter. They’re kind of a very rabid fan base in that sense… I played with Kaskade for New Year’s Eve, and he has a more seasoned crowd that’s been going to EDC since 2008 or whatever.
But when when it comes to actual music, it feels like we’re on the same wavelength. I grew up in the Chicago scene DJing. I wasn’t part of the L.A. EDM scene. I’ve always been DJing with older people.
What have you learned from these artists?
Now that I’m touring all the time, it’s good to [get advice] from guys who’ve been doing it for 15-plus years, and way longer than that. Green Velvet put out “Percolator” the year I was born, so 28 years ago. One thing I worry about is burnout, with how crazy my lifestyle is now.
It’s interesting that you worry about burnout, because I look at you’re social media and think “How is this guy surviving all this?”
Yeah, that’s what everyone thinks. I just played at Space [in Miami] last weekend — I did an eight-hour set and posted about it online. Even my mom called me like, “John, do you really have to be doing these eight hours sets?” I’m like, “It’s what my fans like, mom. It’s what I like doing.” I posted about it, and she just tweet responded, “Call me.” It is tough, though — to maintain a tour schedule — because then I’ve gotta be making music non-stop. I just don’t have a personal life too much. But I don’t mind it. I’m a workaholic, and I love it.
What’s the best place for you to play right now?
It’s also why I live in Miami, because Miami’s my favorite to play, because there’s creative freedom, being able to play whatever I want. I also loved playing in Denver. I did a show there at 1STBANK CENTER and at Red Rocks the next day. In Miami and Ibiza, I can play all types of underground music — I can go minimal, tech house. It’s not like a festival where I have to just play just the huge hits.
But then in Denver, it was cool because I could play anything. They like dubstep and everything, and I even played like a riddim track during my set. Everyone went crazy. So it fun just being able to just do whatever the heck I wanted. I’m a house and techno guy at heart, and that’s basically all I really listened to. When I when I started raving I was very into everything, especially when I’d go to Electric Forest and stuff like that.
“Where You Are” has been on Hot Dance/Electronic Songs for more than four months. It’s a huge hit. What’s your relationship with that song? Has it changed things for you?
Yeah, it’s changed everything. I was big before, but after that song, it’s just been crazy. Especially because every single big artist either they play the original — Martin Garrix has been playing out the original, then Hardwell has a remix, Tiësto has a remix, GRiZ came out with a remix, Gorgon City. It kind of blew me up — because I used to just be in the house and techno bubble, and now I’m really taking the next step for my career. When I was at EDC, I heard it at literally every stage I went to. It was kind of tripping me out. [Laughs.] It just reminded me of of the EDM days where you would hear the same song, like “Animals” by Martin Garrix, at every single set.
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Everything I’ve ever read or heard about you has come with his tagline of like, “the hottest guy in the scene!” Do you feel like a pressure to maintain that? What’s the strategy with you and your management now that you’ve ascended to that level?
It’s been the same strategy for the last three or four years now. There is as lot of pressure, and sometimes it does really get to me. It has a mental toll, but not too bad. Just always, always, always being relevant, always having to be pushing things, whether it’s music or new sets, because every one of my sets is different… Then obviously social media, to always be posting. If I go two days without tweeting, people are like, “John, are you alive?”
That’s why I just have so much respect for artists that have had super long, storied careers. Obviously deadmau5 and kaskade are a perfect examples; they’ve been relevant for how long and are still putting out relevant records. It’s definitely an industry [where] you can get left in the dust if you’re not pushing and innovating.
The social media aspect, you’re obviously just really good at naturally. Is it all genuine, or do you ever feel like you go, “Okay, this is what people think John Summit is going to do, even though I’m not feeling it today.”
That is what I super pride myself on, being genuine. My managers don’t tweet for me, they don’t post for me — everything is all me. But it is a lot of pressure, because then I spend the entire day making TikToks, then it’s 9 p.m., and I’m like, “D–n, I haven’t even started working on my set.’ So then I work on my set until 3 a.m., and then I’m like “Oh, I haven’t even made any music.” It’s really tough when I’m traveling.
If I take a few days off, that’s when you know I’m really cranking hard in the studio. But I like to think that I’ll never just be posting things I don’t actually mean. That’s my version of selling out, not not being myself. Some people think selling out is like, having a big record or something like that. “Where You Are” is a perfect example. Obviously, I didn’t know that was going to be as big of a hit as it is, but I f–king love that record, I put my soul into it with Hayla and spent months and months on it. But if a record label was like, “Can you make this but five times again?” that’d be my version of selling out.